Thou most ancient and most wise Father, I commit to Thee my body, that Thou mayest keep it whole. Yet I know not what I ask--whether I am asking a thing useful or useless to me or _to the friends whom I love and who love me_; nor do I know how long Thou wilt keep it whole. Therefore I commit and commend it to Thee, _for Thou knowest better than I what I need_. Wherefore I pray Thee alway to teach me, while I am in this body and this world, and help me alway to _utter the counsel which is pleasing to Thee, and which is best and most righteous for me in this life_. But above all other things I earnestly pray Thee to convert me wholly to Thee, and let nothing overcome me on this way, to prevent me from coming to Thee; and cleanse Thou me while I am in this world, and make me humble. Give me loftiness of soul. Make me reasonable and just and prudent and perfect; and, O God, make me a lover of Thy wisdom and a perceiver of it, and make me worthy to dwell in Thy blessed kingdom. Amen!
Now I have done as thou didst teach me; now I have prayed even as thou badest me. _Then answered me my Reason and said_:
_R._ _I see that thou hast prayed_; but say now what thou hast merited, or what thou wouldst have.
_A._ I would understand all, and know what I just now said.
_R._ Sum up, then, from _all that thou hast just spoken about, that which seemeth to thee that thou most needest and most requirest to know_; then clothe it in few words, and tell it to me.
_A._ _I will tell it to thee at once_: I would understand God and know mine own soul.
_A._ _Many things I fain would know that I know not._ Howbeit there is nothing I wish more to know than this.
_R._ Then inquire after and seek what thou askest, and tell me first what thou knowest with most certainty, and then say to me: 'Sufficiently known will _God and my soul be to me, if they shall be as well known to me as this thing_.'
_A._ I can name nothing so well known to me as I would that God were.
_R._ What, then, can we do, if thou knowest not the measure? Thou oughtest to know when it seemed to thee enough, and if thou ever come to that limit, then thou shouldst go no further, but shouldst seek something else, lest thou shouldst desire any thing beyond measure.